Oops! All Ikebukuro!
February 18, 2025.
This was a funny day. This day had been our planned Puroland day. But the evening before Koinuko got an email (or something) from her bank saying "WE HAVE BEEN TRYING TO GET IN CONTACT WITH YOU. WE ARE FREEZING YOUR ACCOUNTS. WE THINK YOU HAVE BEEN HACKED". Koinuko's mum back home rang the bank and we thought it would be all hunky dory so we went on our merry way to the train station. When we got there however we found out it may actually not be hunky dory so we decided not to go to Puroland but to instead disassociate in a Starbucks until we figured out what was going on.
Koinuko probably explains it in more detail in her blog, but she eventually got her bank problem fixed and was able to get money out again. But it was now too late to take the train to Puroland if we wanted to get everything done. So we went back out into Ikebukuro for some more shopping!!!!! The first thing we did was actually go to the arcade directly outside the station where I won a cute little guy out of a crane machine!
Animate Ikebukuro is amazing. Oh my god. So much BL... There was a huuge promotion for Demon Boss Mr Gokudera, a series I desperately wish would be translated beyond volume 2. They also still had a special pop up area for the Nu: Carnival pajama themed merch line!! The Eiden standee was sooo cute!!! We spent hours in Animate and I did some major damage. We also hit up AmiAmi, went back down into the yaoi dungeon and hit up a few Surugaya. My favourite one was this tiny little rummage one where everything was like 100-500 yen??? I got a whole lot of magical girl goodies there!!
After all our shopping we went to Kura Sushi for dinner to live my silly dream of trying conveyor belt sushi. It was really yummy!! Not the greatest, but hey it was cheap, novel and fun!! At the time they had a collaboration with Esthter Bunny and I got the most adorable collab drink.
Near the Kura Sushi we went to there was this strange and huge arcade that we wasted our evening in. Koinuko spent so much money trying to win this Elusive Samurai figure it was hilarious. I wish I'd been able to take photos in this arcade because the vibes were awesome but sadly there were no photos allowed so I only got this morbid photo of Moo Deng being hanged for her supposed crimes.
Also on our way back to our air bnb we saw a billboard play an ad for Nu: Carnival that was the full animated OP???? What a yaoiful day! God is Good!
